


And Baby Makes Five

by icewhisper



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Ed needs a drink and to pay more attention, F/M, Gen, M/M, Maes Hughes Lives, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22707409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: In which the Hughes family is growing by one and Ed, somehow, didn't know they were already a family of four.
Relationships: Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes, Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes/Roy Mustang, Gracia Hughes/Roy Mustang, Maes Hughes/Roy Mustang
Comments: 16
Kudos: 174





	And Baby Makes Five

It was good, Ed thought, to get them all together again. He stared around the crowded living room of the Hugheses' apartment and grinned, because it really had been too long. They hadn't all been together since Havoc and Rebecca's wedding the year before and, even then, Al and Mei had only  _ just _ been able to make it from Xing. 

Ed had barrelled in a whole five minutes after the ceremony began and spent the rest of the night with Winry mad at him.

Mustang still gave him crap about it whenever they happened to be in the same city. Ed was eternally grateful that no one seemed willing to put up with the bastard until death do them part, because if they did, he might just skip the wedding entirely to save himself the headache.

(No, he wouldn't. He'd go. Damn it, he kind of liked the asshole these days.)

Not that Mustang was even  _ here _ . He'd been lounging with Hughes when he'd first gotten there, the two of them banished from the kitchen while Gracia puttered around and Elicia played with Black Hayate on the floor, but they'd both vanished at some point. 

"How's the travelling going, chief?" Havoc asked, pulling Ed's focus away from whatever hole Mustang and Hughes had fallen into. Hughes was probably with Gracia, honestly. He usually was.

"Good," he said and mouthed a  _ thank you _ to his brother when Al passed him a fresh drink on his way back to Mei. "I'm going to be staying in Resembool for a while. I've got a lot of research and I need to compile it into something-"

"Coherent?" Al offered with a teasing grin.

"Oh, shut up. My notes aren't  _ that _ bad."

"They are," Winry told everyone, because Winry apparently had no more loyalty to him than his own brother did. "You should see what he's done to the kitchen table."

He resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her, because he was an adult, but also because Winry would probably grab it. "It's not that bad," he muttered behind the rim of his glass, pouting. He looked at Mei. "Come on. Al's gotta have just as many notes as I do."

"Al is  _ organized _ ," Mei said and, damn, he really had no allies here. He should have expected it. Al and Mei had been holed up in Xing together for the last few years now, of course her loyalty would be with his brother.

"Researching alkahestry is a lot more centralized than what you've been doing, brother," Al tried, but he was already a traitor. "You've been travelling a lot more than I have."

He waved a hand at Al, dismissive, and took another sip of his drink as Hughes burst back in with Gracia and Mustang behind him.

"Gracia is pregnant!" Hughes announced with a manic grin as he swept Elicia up off her feet. The eight-year-old squealed and the room erupted into cheers and congratulations.

Elicia wriggled out of Maes' arms after he spun her around and ran straight to Roy where he and Gracia were standing in the doorway with fond smiles. " _ Bàba _ !" she cried happily as she hugged him around the waist. He smoothed his hand over her hair and turned his smile down on her, murmuring softly to her in Xingese.

"It's going to be great," Hughes continued as Breda slapped him on the back and Hawkeye stepped around them to head towards the trio in the doorway. "A perfect little mix of Roy and Gracia."

Ed choked on his drink.

"We weren't too sure about the timing, but the doctor confirmed yesterday that it happened while I was visiting Briggs, so it  _ has  _ to be Roy's," Hughes kept on while Falman nodded along like this wasn't batshit fucking insane. Ed was still trying to cough liquid out of his lungs. "It's going to be great! Another baby. I'm buying a new camera."

"You gonna start parading around with pictures, Fuhrer?" Hawkeye asked, teasing, at the other side of the room.

Mustang rolled his eyes. "Hughes does that enough for the both of us."

"Auntie Riza, I'm gonna a be a big sister!" Elicia said, bouncing on the balls of her feet as her mother's hand touched her head, her fingers tangled with Mustang's against Elicia's hair, and  _ what the hell _ ?

It wasn't until everyone had looked at him and the room went quiet that he realized he'd said it out loud.

"Something to say, Fullmetal?" Mustang asked with that goddamned smarmy smirk that made Ed want to punch him on a  _ normal  _ day.

"You," he ground out, "and Gracia." He looked at Hughes. "And you're okay with this?!"

A beat.

Two.

Someone let out a strangled laugh that might have been Havoc, but also might have been Winry. Fuery was biting his lip like he was trying to keep his own laughter in.

"Ed," his brother said and even Al looked like he was holding back snickers, "you  _ did _ know that the Fuhrer is in a relationship with them, right?"

"No, I fucking did not!" Ed snapped. "You did?"

"Elicia calls him  _ bàba _ ," Al said as if that was supposed to mean jack shit to Ed. When he saw Ed's eyebrow start twitching, he elaborated, "You know the Fuhrer is Xingese, brother.  _ Bàba _ is the term they use for a non-biological father in a polyamorous relationship."

"If they were in Xing, she'd call Brigadier General Hughes  _ fù _ ," Mei added. " _ Bàba _ came around during the sixteenth century when polyamory became more common and they wanted an easier way to differentiate between biological and non-biological parents. The families that don't know or don't care to know will just call all the fathers involved  _ diē _ ."

"They have another whole set of terms for maternal figures too," Al finished and it's not like Ed had forgotten Al had more or less settled down in Xing over the last couple years, but he'd apparently left out a few details.

Ed knew polyamory was a thing over there. There had been a whole thing with Ling back when the guy was preparing to become emperor and he'd mentioned it to Ed in passing. Explained how their society functioned and how, of course, he could be with Lan Fan and whoever else he wanted, so long as he had an heir with someone of a higher standing.

It had taken three months for him to mention it to Winry and her to spend the next  _ week _ laughing at him before she told him Ling had been trying to see if he was interested.

But he hadn't known  _ Mustang and the Hugheses  _ were like that.

Objectively, sure, he knew Mustang was Xingese. Drinks in Madame Christmas' bar years ago where Mustang got melancholy and mentioned how he hadn't moved to Amestris until his parents died when he was ten. It had even made sense, then, that he'd teach Elicia Xingese – because he'd  _ thought  _ that  _ bàba _ was just some term of endearment – and he and Hughes had practically been attached at the hip since Hughes' coma.

"Is that," he started before he could stop himself and waved a hand between Hughes and Mustang, "did it start after Envy?" Because of, maybe?

Hughes laughed. "No. Roy and I have been together since we were teenagers," he explained. "We met in the Academy."

"I was the third," Gracia offered kindly, even if she was grinning too.

"It just took a war for you to decide you were okay with sharing," Mustang muttered, but the eye roll was good-natured. Ed was pretty sure he was having an aneurism. 

Gracia slapped his arm lightly. "Not all of us were raised around this. It takes more thought than you asking me to take him off your hands for half the time."

"My parents met my  _ māma _ when they were travelling through Xing," Hughes chimed in brightly. "They apparently had a  _ real _ fun time explaining to my grandparents why they brought another woman home with them."

"How did you not  _ know _ ?" Winry asked him, bewildered. "You've been here a thousand times over the years! Why did you think their bed was so big?"

"Gracia kicks and Roy's a blanket hog," Hughes sighed, long-suffering.

"Are we just going to ignore your snoring?" Mustang asked flatly.

"I don't snore!"

"Yes, you do," Mustang and Gracia said in unison as Elicia nodded along with them.

Hughes laid a hand over his heart. "Betrayed!" he declared. "By the people I love most!" The rest of the room rolled their eyes as he fell back into an empty chair dramatically. Elicia giggled.

"I...need a drink," Ed decided, pretty sure he hadn't even felt this exhausted after Father and his bullshit. A drink. He needed a strong drink.

He did, at least, make a point to congratulate Gracia, even if he kept staring at Mustang like he'd grown a second head.

He was on his second whiskey by the time Hawkeye sat next to him, watching as Hughes laid a comfortable arm over Mustang's shoulders and Gracia kissed his cheek.

"They asked me to join," she told him and he choked  _ again _ , "but I just couldn't share that many people."

He glared at her and the carefully blank expression on her face, because she knew exactly what she was doing and she was just as evil as the rest of them. "I hate all of you."

"Maybe," she agreed, "but I think they want you to be godfather."

" _ What _ ?!"

The End

**Author's Note:**

> The Xingese terms used in here use Chinese terms for parents, but the biological/non-biological distinctions are mine. I took different terms parents and gave it a Xingese history. The term Elicia uses for Roy is just another way of saying dad in Chinese, but it's not the more ancient term. So I used the more modern term of the two for the non-biological father as a way of showing when the practice was normalized in Xingese culture.


End file.
